04/25/2012

Its 10 p.m. in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, and the nighttime vultures that characterize the city at night are out in full force.

Prostitutes prey on drunk men stumbling out of dimly lit bars, while stray dogs are on the hunt for scraps leftover from the hustle and bustle of daylight hours. These desolate streets are no place for a child to grow up, yet many often do.

A 10-year-old boy who didn't want to give his name says he has been sleeping in a gutter outside a popular grocery store for the past three years. He says poverty pushed him into the streets after he lost both his parents to AIDS.

“Most of the time, I beg for money to buy food because I have no one to look after me," he says. “The problem is some men at night will beat us up and take all that we have sourced throughout the day, leaving us with nothing at all”

Chimwemwe, 12, also left home with dreams of finding a better life in the big city, but his experience has been more comparable to a recurring nightmare.

“Some men rape us night," he says “Others beat us and tell us to go away saying that we are thieves in town”

According to UNICEF, there are approximately 8,000 children living on the streets in Malawi’s major urban centers. Most of them are boys, and 80 per cent are AIDS orphans. These youngsters are often labelled by locals as purse-snatching, thugs, but the reality is that many of them have suffered unimaginable physical and sexual abuses.

Dr. Joseph Bandawe, a clinical psychologist at the Malawi College of Medicine, says that homelessness disrupts the sense of safety and security that children need, and as a result, they wander through life lacking self-confidence and being wary of adults.

“The trust and confidence that good things will happen to them is not there," Bandawe says.

“This affects their social interactions – defining the way they’re able to relate to other people, and the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not.”

Bandawe’s explanation might explain why many of Malawi’s street kids are tempted by a life of crime, but he also suggests that building trust and restoring family ties is imperative when returning troubled kids to school.

Chisomo Childrens Club is a local non-profit working on child poverty issues, and their main mission is to integrate youth back into an ordinary way of life. According to Irene Ngumano, a senior social worker for Chisomo, the biggest challenge in terms of rehabilitation is working with families who were willing to let their children go in the first place.

“Many families that we are working with are poverty stricken families who typically don’t have three meals a day," says Ngumano.

With Malawi’s escalating economic problems, inflation now stands at a staggering 10.9 per cent, causing the prices of essential commodities like bread and sugar to skyrocket. This implies one thing: the number of street children is set to increase unless there is radical policy change.

But Ngumano adds that if families are facing financial difficulties, Chisomo provides monetary assistance which enables them, at the very least, to feed their dependents.

Such was the case with 17-year-old Tikhala Chilembwe who ran away from home in Grade 3. He slept under a bridge for years, until he was discovered by Chisomo social workers who reunited him with his legal guardians and resumed his education.

“My life is okay right now,” says Tikhala, with a smile. “When I’m finished school, I want to become a doctor and I am going to work hard to achieve my goals."

There's so much more to Africa than predictable headlines about war, famine and AIDS. From Ghanaian beauty pageants to music in Malawi, Africa Without Maps provides a rare glimpse of life in Africa from Journalists for Human Rights interns on the ground.

July 21, 2011 was an unruly day in Lumbadzi, Malawi – a violent protest paraded through the streets. While some citizens were using the protest to loot shops and pelt stones at police officers, many innocent people were injured.

“I started to run, but I felt numbness in my left foot. I realized that there was a lot of blood and I was told that I was shot,” said 16-year-old Stanley Zacharia, who said he was shot in the foot by police following the demonstration against corrupt governance charges.

The violent protest left 20 people dead and over 200 people injured.

It has been over seven months since the occurrence and families of surviving victims have yet to receive answers, advice or assistance from any organization.

“I rushed to the scene and when I got there I saw my boy was lying in a pool of blood. He couldn’t walk or sit. The blood was oozing so much,” said Albert Zacharia, who described the day when he thought his son, Stanley, was going to die.

Zacharia wasn’t the only 16-year-old to be shot during the July demonstration. Mphatso Banda, who was on the verge to play for Malawi’s national under-17 soccer team, now lives with a bullet in his leg. He was also shot by a police officer. He said he wasn’t a threat to police, but rather he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I was coming back from the trading centre and that’s where I was shot. In fact, I didn’t even know I was shot until someone told me,” said Mphatso.

A lot of money was spent on hospital bills. While Zacharia is left with two broken toes and a wound that may cause infection, Mphatso was told by doctors at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe that resources for his recovery would be readily available at a hospital in South Africa. However, due to the lack of financial means, he cannot afford to pay for his full recovery.

There has been financial compensation to families who have lost loved ones, but those left with permanent injuries like Stanley and Mphatso have not received any compensation.

During a 2012 New Year’s speech, Malawi police chief Peter Mukhito admitted that the police force did not have adequate equipment to handle July’s demonstration. Rather than using rubber bullets, the police used real bullets.

Davie Chingwalu, the national spokesperson for the Malawi police said cases like Zacharia’s are still being investigated.

The Malawi Human Rights Commission is a government organization that investigates cases in which police may have caused unnecessary injuries. John Kapito, the chairperson of the MHRC said during their investigation, they did discover the injustice on both Stanley’s and Mphatso’s cases. He said their next step is to determine what action should follow.

The human rights activists who organized the July 21 demonstration, among others, have been paying tribute to families of people whose lives were lost during the violent protest. MacDonald Sembereka, the national coordinator of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, was one of the many who organized the demonstration and said there are legal actions that victims can initiate.

“We are looking at legal address for them. We know who shot them and they are liable to sue the government in this circumstance. We want them to take this to court,” said Sembereka.

Albert Zacharia, Stanley’s father, worries about the lack of action taken by these organizations that are forefront of the investigations.

“Who do I blame? Should I blame the government, the civil society, should I blame myself? Should I blame the boy? There are no answers to these questions. At the moment, I need assistance in figuring out what should be the next step,” he said.

There's so much more to Africa than predictable headlines about war, famine and AIDS. From Ghanaian beauty pageants to music in Malawi, Africa Without Maps provides a rare glimpse of life in Africa from Journalists for Human Rights interns on the ground.

Malawi’s Legal Aid volunteers sift through a pile of files of those on death row. They are doing everything they can to abolish the death penalty in the country and lessen existing prisoners’ sentences.

At least 29 men currently sit on death row in Malawi; however, no one has been executed in the country since 1994. Those sentenced to death are entitled to a mandatory appeal in the Supreme Court.

“Countries like Malawi that have made the transition to democracy increasingly see abolition of the death penalty as a necessary step to signal their commitment to human rights,” said Emile Carreau, an Australian volunteer with Legal Aid.

Judges in Malawi can still sentence offenders to death; they handed down four or five death penalties in 2010 and with only a few murder trials taking place in 2011 no death penalties were given. However, this year more murder trials are expected in the High Court.

Francis Kafantayeni was convicted of murdering his two-year-old stepson in 2002. His lawyers claimed he had been acting in a state of temporary insanity because he smoked marijuana. The judge had no choice but to convict Kafantaneni of the murder and sentenced him to hanging, a mandatory sentence for murder.

After a two year long trial, the High Court ruled that a judge could pass down individual sentences to offenders by taking into account the offender’s background, circumstances of the crime and mental health.

“Before lawyers didn’t bother looking into the person’s background and offense. So I’m going through to see what happen at the time of the offense, what happen in their life and since they have been in prison. Trying to get a sentence of life in prison or less,” said Carreau.

However, a judiciary strike in the country has paralyzed the court system making accessing files impossible for the time being.

A shortage of legal aid lawyers also makes it difficult to go through all the files in a timely manner. The State Department reported in 2009 that there were only 15 lawyers and seven paralegals working as public defenders throughout Malawi.

“Legal Aid is ridiculously over burdened at the moment with only a handful of lawyers in Blantyre. Not enough, considering the number of people entitled to Legal Aid,” said Carreau.

Another challenge Legal Aid lawyers are facing in Malawi is the public perception of capital punishment.

“Legal Aid is working to get more lenient sentences for those on death row but the public wants higher sentences. When there (has) been a gruesome murder the general public wants capital punishment to be available for the crime,” said Amanda Walker, a volunteer for Legal Aid.

In 2009 the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law developed a report and interviewed death row prisoners about conditions at the prison. The report stated that currently all death row prisoners are kept in a separate section of Zomba’s Maximum Security Prison. Men share small cells and sleep on the floor, generally they receive one meal per day. When the prison suffers from a food shortage the men don’t receive meals and power outages are frequent.

The report also states, "most lawyers do not visit their clients in prison until shortly before trial, if at all. It is commonplace for lawyers to meet their clients for the first time at trial."

Although lawyers in Malawi must overcome some major difficulties, they are confident that country is on its way to abolishing the death penalty.

“The abolition of the mandatory death penalty in Kafantayeni and the fact that Malawi has not actually carried out an execution since 1994 has put the country in good stead to abolish the death penalty,” said Carreau.

In recent years some of Malawi's neighbouring countries have abolished the death penalty, like in South Africa and Mozambique.

02/09/2012

Nuuna works in one of the vegetable gardens growing in the shadow of Military Hospital No. 37 in Accra, Ghana. The tall 24-year-old is the eldest of five children living in his mother’s house. He works hard to maintain a balance between family obligations and time in the field while also pursuing an education.

Nuuna’s callused hands stand as an example of his hard work, each day he and his siblings earn their pay by plucking crops from the soil, removing the small leaves, severing the stock and binding individual sprigs together to be sold. The bundles are then put into corrugated boxes bound for local and international markets.

“Some stays here, but almost everything we pull up gets sent to the U.K. or Europe,” Nuuna says.

The land where Nuuna grows his crops is irrigated with water drawn from both a well and a stream fed by run-off from city sewers. He says the property is government-owned, but still not on the water supply grid.

“I went to see them (the water and housing commission) about pipes many times," he says. "They would never talk to me, always said to go and come (back later). I think they wanted a bribe or something.”

Without fresh water, farmers like Nuuna are forced to grow crops using the water sources available.

One of those sources is a sewer that contains run-off from Accra's Military Hospital No. 37, built during the Second World War. About a year ago, the pipe carrying raw medical waste from the mortuary, maternity and surgical theatres to the treatment tank was damaged. Unable to fix the line, the hospital began dumping bio-hazardous material into the city’s open-gutters. Now, the sewers are overflowing and downstream the stench of contamination and concern is growing thick.

In the city, clean water is a critical commodity and it doesn’t come cheap. Drinking from faucets is rarely advised and potable sources are most likely found in a bottle or sachet. Open sewers carry liquid and solid waste material of all sort, and when they overflow the result can be devastating.

Last year during the rainy season, Accra was rocked by flooding and the rapid tide of a cholera epidemic. Nearly 6,000 people fell ill with 80 eventually dying from the disease. Cholera can be treated with rehydration fluids but amongst infants, the elderly and the infirm death can occur within hours. The youngest victim of the outbreak was only eight days old when her tiny body succumbed to the bacterial infection.

At this point, no provable connection between hospital waste and outbreak has been established. However, many living near MH-37 have complained of general poor health and the World Health Organization (WHO) advises that epidemics become virulent when water caches are contaminated.

The Globe newspaper and Citi-fm radio station, both based in Accra, developed and broke a medical waste story near the end of January. The news sparked public outrage and in response the AMA (Accra Metropolitan Assembly) formed an emergency fact-finding committee. The investigation found deplorable conditions at the hospital and authored a series of recommendations. The list includes an overhaul of the drainage system and repairs to deteriorating hospital infrastructure, it is also opening the door to charges of criminal negligence.

The AMA’s official report states the target is to prevent future dumping and endangerment of public health. However, the committee failed to acknowledge the residual realities faced by urban farmers in Accra, according to reports.

The hospital was unavailable for comment.

Funding for the jhr bloggers is provided by the Government of Canada’s Youth International Internship Program in Ghana and Malawi, the Canadian International Development Agency in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development in Liberia. Meet the jhr bloggers.

12/16/2011

Amidst severe fuel scarcities, frustrated drivers queue at a gas station after being tipped off that a tanker is set to arrive to offload petrol.Photo by Elena Sosa Lerín.

By Elena Sosa Lerín

It’s a Thursday afternoon and the thermometer is about to hit 40 degrees.

Taxi driver Mike Msindira, 32, is sweaty and exasperated, but resigned to the idea of losing time and his daily income of $75 Cdn by driving all over Blantyre looking for fuel.

He has now been at this gas station for nearly nine hours, and his tank is at zero; but he won’t leave because his car is one of the first vehicles in the queue and he’s heard from different sources that this particular gas station will be receiving gasoline and diesel before the end of the day.

Msindira, along with thousands of other Malawians, is experiencing the fourth fuel crisis of the year.

Each crisis has been the result of the government’s inability to import gasoline or diesel due to its inability to acquire foreign exhange.

Fuel scarcity in the country has disrupted businesses, affected public services, and even regular activities, such as going to work or driving children to school.

But those who don’t own a car are also hurting.

Due to fuel scarcity, by the end of November, minibus operators announced a significant increase in their bus fares, from an average of 50 cents to around 70 cents per journey. Considering that most Malawians live on less than two dollars a day, many have chosen to walk to and from their workplaces and homes, as they cannot afford to pay the new rates.

But the one thing that the absence of fuel has been fuelling is corruption.

For instance, Msindira says that it’s becoming an unfair but common practise to pay “tips” to gas station attendants to get advanced notice of the day and time the station is set to receive petrol.

If you don’t tip them, Msindira says, you don’t get serviced at all.

The Malawi Energy Regulating Authority has stated that it will revoke the licenses of operators who engage in corruption. It also says that it will work with the police to arrest those attendants who ask for tips. However, to date, nothing has been mentioned as to how these measures will be implemented.

These crises have seen the emergence of a steady black market for the illegal sale of fuel with prices ranging from $5 to 6 Cdn per litre.

Adding insult to injury, unscrupulous traders are mixing fuel with other substances, such as paraffin or water, which can potentially harm car engines.

Blessings Nkhambure, 27, an electrical engineer, has waited for 48 hours to get gasoline.

He hasn’t showered for two days. His meals have consisted of bananas or bread, which he passes down with Fanta. To avoid falling asleep at the gas station at night, he chats with the people around him, or listens to music from his cell phone.

“The government should assist us urgently,” Nkhambure says. “We can’t run our business, we can’t eat, we can’t do anything without fuel.”

In an attempt to pacify the public, the government announced in late October that the Reserve Bank of Malawi had made over $3 million Cdn available to Petroleum Importers Limited (PIL) to allow the purchase of 15 million litres of fuel.

But this only provided Malawians with 20 days-worth of petrol, and fuel scarcity reared its ugly head once more.

Even Energy Minister Goodall Gondwe admitted in early November that this effort wasn’t enough, explaining that in fact, roughly $30 million Cdn is needed to solve the issue.

11/08/2011

Like millions of people in Malawi, men working Blantyre's common food stalls are employed outside of the formal economy and often lack social security benefits such as pension plans. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Two months ago, our neighbours here in Blantyre, Malawi, fired their night watchman. The man was in his late sixties and, we suspected, was going senile.

‘What will he do for money?’ I recall wondering. But the thought was soon forgotten.

Last week, however, the night guard’s fate returned to my conscience. Researching a story on social security in Malawi, I learned that in all likelihood, my neighbour’s former employee now lives in extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as living on the equivalent of less than $1.50 U.S. a day).

Down a back road in Blantyre, a colleague and I found Enock Andaradi sifting through a pile of garbage, scavenging for anything that he could exchange for money or food.

“Life has been tough on me, especially lately because I am completely abandoned,” he told us.

Andaradi, 79, was also once a night guard. But he, too, was dismissed on account of his old age.

A few days later, Jonathan Mbenje told a similar story. Despite being 73-years-old, he was still working as a night guard, but expressed great anxiety for his future.

“For me to be working at this old age is not out of choice,” he said. “Being a guard, especially at this age, it is very dangerous.”

In Canada, these men could have paid into pension plans and now be living comfortably in retirement. But in Malawi and throughout much of Sub Saharan Africa —where, according to a comprehensive World Bank analysis, an average of 40 per cent of economic activity takes place outside the formal sector— such social services are largely out of reach.

In Malawi, there is legislation aimed at providing the basics of a welfare system.

The Employment Act, for example, includes provisions pertaining to a minimum wage, contract terminations, and severance pay. And there are sections in the act that state that employers must provide paid sick leave as well as full pay for women on maternity leave. In addition, the recently-amended Pension Bill sets the maximum retirement age at 70 and requires employers to pay 10 per cent of an employee’s wage into a pension fund.

However, according to a 2010 report by the International Labour Office in Geneva, 90 per cent of Malawians – more than 13 million people – work outside of the formal economy. And considering the extent to which significant segments of the population are fundamentally excluded from society due to poverty and inequality, the prestigious 2010 Ibrahim Index of African Governance gives Malawi a miserable score of two out of 10.

The Malawi government has attempted to extend social services to this large and vulnerable pool of labour.

Section 43 of the Employment Act refers to benefits for seasonal workers, and a 2010 amendment to the act reduced the qualifying period for long service benefits from 12 months to three. Furthermore, the 1996 Labour Relations Act provides for the formation of trade unions in the informal economy, and a group called the Malawi Union for the Informal Sector now exists.

Even still, an untold number of Malawians fall through these safety nets, which, as the situations of these night guards makes clear, remain porous.

A primary factor frustrating efforts to see casual labourers gain access to programs such as pensions is a lack of awareness.

Andaradi claimed that he has never heard of social services for the old and unemployed. “I do not know how the aged can be helped,” he lamented.

Another problem is the ineffectual state of Malawi law enforcement.

Mbenje is employed by a registered security company, and so upon leaving his job, he said he does expect to receive some form of monetary compensation to help ease him into retirement. But he complained that uneducated workers like him rarely get what they are owed.

“Most of the time, they give someone between K20,000 and K40,000 ($120-$240 U.S.),” Mbenje reported, noting that that would be a one-time payout, and not any sort of regular allowance.

“With that kind of money, you cannot survive; hence, I am still working at age 73.”

10/08/2011

Political cartoonist Hazwel Kunyenje draws, on average, 15 cartoons per week. Depending on the level of detail, creating a cartoon might take him from 15 minutes to four hours.Photo by Elena Sosa Lerín.

Hazwel Kunyenje is a political cartoonist who has spent more than 15 years illustrating articles, editorials and short stories for one of the country’s largest media houses, Blantyre Newspapers Limited.

Of affable allure and with a serene expression, Kunyenje remembers drawing on any piece of paper or surface he could find as a child.

“Drawing was a necessity,” he says, “I just felt I had to do it and I knew I wasn’t bad at it.”

Although he studied painting at the University of Malawi, he is mostly a self-taught caricaturist, who has “picked [up] some tricks along the way.” He follows cartoonists at Newsweek and the Washington Post, and enjoys Dik Browne’s “Hägar the Horrible” because of its unclassifiable humour.

Political cartooning is relatively new in this country. Prior to the 1990s, the press was just an outlet for government propaganda, and cartoons were mere depictions of places or events, often published in lieu of photographs.

But between 1993 and 1994, the 33-year rule of President Hastings Banda came to an end and the press was liberated. Suddenly, there was a demand to graphically satirize the new political atmosphere and editors were hiring anyone who could caricature it.

Kunyenje started working as a cartoonist at New Voice, back then, a small, local newspaper in the northern city of Mzuzu - but he had larger aspirations.

In 1994, he mailed samples of his work to the editors of BNL, a move that has placed him on the national press scene for the past 17 years.

Political cartoonists in other countries (like Burkina Faso’s Damien Glez, Kenya-based Godfrey Mwampwemba, or Canada’s André Pijet) are usually accepted as serious commentators and analysts of political and social issues due to their satirical but critical look at local and world issues.

But unlike them, Kunyenje feels that cartoonists in Malawi are merely considered “people that can draw well.”

He believes that editors and readers overlook the impact of cartoons on democratization.

As a matter of fact, Kunyenje has limited control over the creation of his cartoons, as they regularly follow the vision of his editors. Most of the time, they are the ones who decide on the subject of a cartoon, and, even the jokes.

“Editors in Malawi don’t have a good idea of what a cartoon can do,” he explains.

At this point, Kunyenje’s stutter takes over his speech. He stops talking, reaches for his briefcase and pulls out a folder. He starts flicking through dozens of carefully catalogued cartoon clippings from different national and international newspapers and magazines he has collected throughout the years, and soon finds what he wats.

“This. This is what we don’t have in Malawi.” Kunyenje holds a small, aged clipping dated Feb. 16 1989. It shows a fat vulture wearing a headscarf, about to prey on an emaciated bear lying on the ground. It is the editorial take by world-renowned Israeli cartoonist, Ranan Lurie, on the end of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan.

“We aren’t this sophisticated,” emphasizes Kunyenje. He thinks Malawian cartoons lack the degree of visual metaphor and symbolism that other cartoonists bring to their work, in part due to editorial decisions, but also because cartoonists are still forging their identity in the newsroom.

Something that would contribute to the betterment of cartoonists in Malawi is criticism. But Kunyenje points out that he only gets positive feedback from the readers, who he says, “think cartoons are just something to laugh at.”

Yet there is always the occasional government official who threatens the papers with censorship, like the Minister of Information and Tourism, Patricia Kaliati, who in April 2006, considered cartoons from national newspapers The Daily Times and The Nation to be “disgracefully castigating the government.”

Although his editors deal directly with the censorship threats, he welcomes such comment on his cartoons - even if they’re negative - because such comments are an acknowledgement of the art of cartooning.

09/02/2011

Employees of The Daily Times and other BP&P papers have been laid off as Malawi faces economic difficulties. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

“Dear brethren,” Leonard Chikadya, managing director of Blantyre Printing and Publishing, began the conclusion of a speech to staff on Aug. 30.

“With a lot of pain in my heart, I have swallowed my pride and, reluctantly, decided that I am going to reduce our head count. I am going to reduce the number of colleagues that we have by 44.”

Speaking for the leadership of the largest publishing house in Malawi, Chikadya’s words soon reverberated throughout the media environment of the entire country.

And they were not the only ones.

On the same day, the state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation announced that a significant round of layoffs would hit its ranks too. The following morning, just 418 remained of the 700 employees who comprised MBC the day before.

In a packed cafeteria at BP&P’s head office in Blantyre, Chikadya showed remorse for the situation.

“I have called this meeting because this problem affects all of us,” he said to some 150 of the company’s 260 staff. “We were all witness to what happened on the 20 of July…but what happened on the 20 of July was just a symptom of the problems we are facing.”

The date Chikadya referenced was initially reserved for peaceful demonstrations aimed at government inaction on foreign reserve shortages and fuel scarcity. But the people’s anger boiled over and by nightfall, riots met with police brutality left 19 dead and scores more injured.

And so, yesterday, BP&P’s editors, reporters, salespeople, and everybody else that a publishing house requires to function, were told that financial hardships matched by the government’s mismanagement of the economyhad reached their doorstep.

“We are all aware of the acute shortage of forex,” Chikadya explained, referring to the country’s dwindling foreign currency reserves. Requests for loans from Malawi’s cash-strapped banks had been denied and negotiations with BP&P’s paper supplier had hit a wall. If action was not taken, Chikadya continued, BP&P would no longer have the capacity to pay for the broadsheet on which it prints Malawi’s news.

Throughout the rest of the day, envelopes circulated as reporters manned their desks until the last of their stories were filed. Even those who knew they were on their way out remained loyal.

“Don’t show it to me,” one was heard as a letter was dropped on his desk. “I will file my article and be gone by the end of the day.”

The morning of Aug. 31, those who remained spoke with nervous optimism. “We live to fight another day,” one BP&P reporter said.

I’m sure the mood over in the newsroom at MBC was similar.

Malawi’s economy is struggling badly. On Aug. 31, two of the country’s biggest media houses felt the weight of these hard times. And 326 of their employees carried it home.

08/22/2011

Seated on the porch of her state residence in Blantyre, Malawi’s first female Vice President, Joyce Banda, wraps a thick, white shawl around her shoulders and clasps her hands together, indicating that she’s ready to be interviewed.

There is a calmness about Mudi State Residence, with its towering trees and extensive gardens. In such a setting, it is difficult to imagine the starkly different atmosphere that engulfed Malawi’s commercial capital just one month ago.

On July 20, nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations against economic and administrative mismanagement took place, but it wasn’t long before these organized marches disintegrated into chaos and the country erupted into two days of rioting, widespread looting, and violent clashes between police and civilians.

The use of lethal force by police resulted in 19 deaths, dozens of injuries, and more than 500 arrests.

“Where Malawi is at [right now] is as a result of two or three years of frustration and pain and trying to reason with government – and government refusing to listen” Banda says.

Vice President, Joyce Banda. Photo by Katie Lin.

Long plagued by fuel, electricity, water, and foreign-exchange shortages, Malawians presented President Bingu wa Mutharika and his administration with a 20-point petition on the day of the demonstrations. A dialogue between civil society organizers and the government to discuss the petition is scheduled for Sept. 17.

While Banda hopes this dialogue will yield viable solutions, she explains that the root of these problems lies within the political agenda of the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP).

“The President wants his brother to take over from him,” Banda explains of the cause for tensions within the DPP.“And that’s where [the problems] start from.”

In December 2010, the Vice President was expelled from the DPP for her stance against this unconstitutional succession process – and her strained relationship with Mutharika, her honourary “father” and mentor, only appears to be worsening.

Just two days after the protests, Mutharika threatened to arrest numerous political and civil society leaders – including Banda and leader of the opposition, John Tembo – accusing them of organizing the July 20 demonstrations to topple his administration.

Despite having been openly critical of the President’s constitutional breaches, Banda insists she did not organize or participate in the demonstrations.

“I called upon those that were going to exercise that right to march to march peacefully and not to destroy property. I asked the police to protect lives on the road. I also asked the leadership of this country to discuss matters that affect Malawians and resolve any problems peacefully.”

For Banda, Mutharika’s accusations are unwarranted.

“When I hear my name, top on the list of those who are wanted, to be persecuted or to be killed or to be smoked out ... I’m surprised,” she explains, “because I don’t know what crime I have committed.”

“But if the crime is that I stood by Malawians when they suffered, when they protested, when they were not happy, then I am ready to be persecuted.”

Most recently, the People’s Party (PP), a political party formed by Banda and her supporters, officially registered and claims to have already gathered more than 1 million members, further strengthening speculation she is a strong presidential candidate for the 2014 national elections.

“Joyce Banda is a shrewd politician, both in terms of organizing and in terms of making an appeal when she speaks,” says political analyst Blessings Chisinga. “So when you look at the potential contenders for the 2014 elections, she is clearly a frontrunner.”

He explains that the emerging PP may offer a fresh and credible alternative for Malawians in the 2014 elections, as disillusionment towards the DPP grows and opposition parties enter a state of flux.

“Malawians are fed up and are very keen to welcome a new brand of politics.”

08/12/2011

Longtime activist Emmie Chanika sits in front of her struggling NGO's new office. Like many groups in Malawi, financial constraints have pushed the group near to its breaking point. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Considering I was interviewing Emmie Chanika to learn about the financial hardships her NGO is experiencing, we couldn’t have met at a more appropriate time.

I found Chanika working in the rain outside of her old office in downtown Blantyre. The executive director for the Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) had already loaded a truck with office equipment and files and was making final preparations for a move to a –shall we say– cozier space.

Running behind schedule, I jumped into the truck with Chanika and a couple of her colleagues and proceeded with my interview on the bumpy ride out to CILIC’s new headquarters in Mbayani, a neighbourhood just outside of the city’s Central Business District.

“Oh, you’re Canadian,” Chanika said. “You know, it’s a Canadian that is giving us this space for our office.”

I hadn’t known that.

Upon being contacted, my fellow countryman declined to allow for his name to appear in the media. But he made clear he felt that CILIC is an organization worth supporting.

“It is led by a very dynamic person,” he explained. “Over the years, Emmie Chanika has fought for many causes and not restricted her work to one segment of society. Black or white, she has been helping out everybody. She has given a lot of personal sacrifice.”

Back in the pickup truck, Chanika lamented that her Canadian friend’s organization is one of the few supporters CILIC has left. In Malawi, times are tough for NGOs.

“As an activist, my wings have been clipped,” Chanika said. “Civil Liberties Committee has been undermined by donors, government, and civil society. And because of that, we haven’t had funding for almost two years, going into the third year.”

It’s like there is a perfect storm working against NGO funding in Malawi, she explained to me. There is unnecessary competition for funds among nonprofits working in the country. Malawi’s economy is in a tailspin and chronic fuel shortages have resulted in soaring commodity prices.

And President Bingu wa Mutharika’s increasingly-autocratic leadership style has sent international donors running.

“Our organization’s funding problems began before Mutharika,” Chanika noted. “Our problems started with NGO-infighting and needless competition. And then Mutharika was able to come and take advantage of a situation already deteriorating.”

CILIC was formed in 1992, making it one of the oldest human rights organizations in the country. Not only was it was at the front of Malawi’s first marches for women’s rights in the late 1990s, but Chanika was also one of the founding members of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, an umbrella organization largely responsible for organizing the July 20, 2011 nationwide demonstrations against poor governance and economic mismanagement.

But today, CILIC is all but defunct, Chanika sighed. She and her employees still show up for work everyday, but increasingly, they are having to empty their own pockets to continue working.

“My husband, he asks, ‘Why don’t you just leave them?’” she recounted. “And I ask my husband, ‘What then would I do with my energies?’”

Africa Without Maps

There's so much more to Africa than predictable headlines about war, famine and AIDS. From Ghanaian beauty pageants to music in Malawi, Africa Without Maps provides a rare glimpse of life in Africa from Journalists for Human Rights interns on the ground.

Funding for the jhr bloggers is provided by the Government of Canada's Youth International Internship Program.

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